the way this version was designed, trash monsters are far more difficult than bosses. their high resists, counters, curse counters, and high phys dmg makes their dmg output far higher than any act boss. thankfully, since bosses were made weaker, the best strategy is to make a build that can skip all of the trash monsters and kill the bosses. furthermore, being able to hit 90 in normal wsk makes it even easier to power level in normal with loaders and simply skip the rest of the game content to kill easy bosses.

perhaps even more noteworthy is that the best items in the game are simply normal or exceptional weapons upgraded to elite. there is literally nothing to look forward to past lvl 86 ish when it comes to the best weapons possible. so basically you power level/gear up in late normal, and just blow through nm/hell since your character isn't going to get much stronger past this point. after you finish normal, its just full speed to hell baal by stomping bosses and skipping content.

skipping trash is by far the most efficient way to play this version. the unfortunate part is that you are far stronger playing solo using this method than in a party, because any party member that can't skip all the trash mobs cannot keep up with you. you also don't have to worry about time scheduling with party members which enables you to press forward much faster. just to be clear, i played solo almost the entire way from a1 norm to hell baal.

during the beta, many of us complained about weak bosses. i only played through normal back then though, so i had no idea just how great the disparity between boss strength and trash strength would be in nm/hell. i can only say that combined with some of the other changes, this is the one gripe i have with 1.7.

to sum it up: the combination of weak bosses, trash mob super strength, end game gear available in normal, being able to level high enough to use that end game gear in normal, and lack of rewarding items in nm/hell, means skipping virtually all content in nm/hell and just killing bosses is the most effective way to play. the game design has never been so rewarding to players who decide against grinding and want a speedy playthrough.

I think in general I'd agree with the points you mention, although it sounds like you might not have enjoyed some of the intentional difficulty lowering (I'd agree with that too). It's understandable for folks to want the challenge increased once they've figured out how v1.7 works, but I suppose as Testers you and I have had extra time to figure things out so will feel things sooner.

During Testing, monster treasure classes were changed in a way that made more exceptional and elite items spawn in Normal that were previously only available in NM. I understood that this would detract from NM's value, but didn't think it would be enough of an issue to further adjust things. Hell difficulty was intended to be pretty much the same as NM, but since there were no new items or character levels, and the monsters gained base resistances, I figured it would be enough of a challenge increase for folks who wanted to continue playing for the sake of challenge (although a team larger than 3 shouldn't have much trouble at all) and collecting trophy-items like LoShadows charms.

Most of v1.7 was designed around two types of players: those who want to try all the builds (might make a new character after Norm or NM completion or fully optimizing their character), and those who wanted challenge (might stop after collecting every trophy-item). I think the design is missing a type of player who is interested in something closer to a speed-run (e.g. getting the Patriach, Matriarch, or Guardian prefix quickly, but I'm sure there's lots of potential goals). I don't think any of the Testers were able to represent that play style strongly enough to suggest compromises to the design that would facilitate that style, which is unfortunate since it does encourage replaying (this is one of the goals of v1.7). Perhaps HUv1.8 could be designed with that play style in mind. For players interested in trying that playstyle in v1.7, then you'll want to level in areas where monsters are 5 levels above you (here's a quick list of monster levels in Norm, ignore the "!!" flags relevant only during Testing, and the names and level ordering is straight from the text files so most HU-specific areas at the end), NM monsters yield +10%Exp over Normal (Hell is +10%EXP over NM), but it is likely that WSK's monster density makes up for that. I'd expect that Teleport (maybe LeapAttack) and an AI skill (Terror, Convert, etc) would be critical for finding the shortest path through areas. I consider myself mostly a "try all the things" and "beat all the things -- once or twice" player myself, so apologies in advance for missing features that would improve other play styles.

After reviewing your thoughts, it sounds like you might be finished with HUv1.7 (which is alright with me since I know you've tried many builds during Testing, and it's not like a lot has changed from the Beta. Thank you for the assistance). If you're not interested in restarting then can you think of any changes that would encourage you (perhaps in Summer we could have an update that includes the changes (provided no character-wipes are required (save those changes for HUv1.9)))? If you are interested in restarting, then are there particular builds you never got around to trying that seemed interesting? No worries if you're too busy to play or reply.

I would say nm and hell items dropping earlier is irrelevant when normal items are a lot better when up'd. Some that come to mind are bverrit keep and soulmancer helm. All items seem to follow this awful trope of trying to be very similar, but failing to really provide anything. Like the nightmare 2 skill sorb shields which are outclassed by a pelta lunata. And there is four of them. Or many nm quality items that are just inferior to an upgraded normal item. There are exceptions, but they're few and far between. I think you did a major disservice to endgame by locking everythung behind essentially charms. There isn't any replayability there. In the past I would run stuff solely for the chance at 95s to either trade or straight up make a build. Player progression is gone after normal essentially, and if I can facetank a boss in nm I can reasonably expect to do so in hell.

You mention trophy items but really there isn't anything to look forward to. No skillers to farm, no 95s to work towards, no level requirements to even level for. In the past builds found big power spikes entirely due to gearing, unlocking the super gems allotted pierce. 88-95 had a variety of strong items. 97/99 unlocked charms thay gave skills. Now there is nothing to look forward to. Game is done in nm for all intents and purposes. Most of the 'trophy' items of the past as you would describe them were from los and other such things. And these weren't fun fights, they were cheesy one shot mechanics. The last time I ran los it was one shotting people through max oak, max bo, so it was essentially done by things like hydra, traps, or poison zons who hoped to rng win with dodge.

You say mobs give 10% more exp in nm, do you mean act 1 nm mobs give 10% more exp in relation to act 1 normal mobs? So none at all?

Truth be told I think the game is designed entirely for ease of trying a large variety of builds. Not sure where this challenge trope is coming in, because the jump from nm to hell might as well not exist. And even then I think you've lost that spark, that satisfying feeling of finally hitting 95 and being able to slot 95 items and really get your build running. I haven't once felt any thrill in finding any item, and that is a shame since the game is widely based on that mechanic.

I don't want to be that one guy who "starts it again", but honestly, it always feels like whenever people criticize basically fucking anything, it always turns either into this ostrich mentality where the people who should be answering instead talk about completely different things just to win an imaginary argument going on in their heads or these retarded trollbaits where they're just trying to subtly bait people into getting triggered by clever, behind-the-lines insults.

I'll just say it: if you can't take criticism, can you just not touch the mod? Like, really. Please. Just leave.

Inb4 who am I to talk. Yeah, who am I to talk, just some guy nobody really fucking knows. I used to play this mod back when it was run by Mancer, I have no idea which version I started in, don't ask, doesn't matter anyway. I still come back for patches to see how much things change.

Next time I'll be sure to check back for the testing phase since I haven't been doing that till now. I'm eager to see the next iteration and state an opinion before it goes live. If, I repeat, IF you're willing to listen.

The problem with the testing phase is it's not run on a server. If it was merely a matter of changing the a letter in the ip, you could get realtime feedback from a lot of players. But right now it's just play on single player.

But yeah most of the time the people modding don't listen to feedbakc anyways. Granted I was pretty late before offering feedback but it wasn't before the server was updated.

And I screamed to the high fucking heavens that mana was a problem, and all I ever got was it gets better later and look at my big design document. In any case, a vast majority of casters are really unplayable unless you like literally picking up and drinking every mana pot you find. This usually isnt even enough with a dry spell of drops or god for fucking bid 2 people needing them.

But what I didn't notice and didn't test because why the fuck would I play into hell in single player was the virtual non existant jump in difficulty from nm to hell and the piss poor state of items and runewords. Cta, the bo shield, only real two viable runewords. The sockets are too fucking strong and the runewords don't offer enough pdr to be viable. Whole game is built around pdr right now.

The main difference between Pious' posts and others is that he makes zero condescending remarks about how stupendously incompetent the modders were.

As far as listening to feedback, and making sure it is all taken in before release. This is what we attempted in the first few patches after Soulmancer allowed us to continue. It was just as ugly. Anyone seen blue since? (hint he has popped in once after, but that is literally it).

Someone has to make decisions. It's fine to bring points to the fore that are of concern. It is against all of our interests to shit all over someone's work thinking that 'I know this is much better'. Put up or shut up when it comes down to that imo. When you are done. Be prepared for exactly what has happened almost every time something has been released in the past 6? or so years.

_________________The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

I was not prepared for the game to be dead 2 weeks in. I was not prepared for the amount of tedium added back into the game. My first character I stuck with because brevan said it would get better mana wise, it got fucking worse. The entire patch can be described as tedious. You get the full experience after normal, nm mobs give no experience and the bosses are a joke. I just did act 2, I can literally sit in front of the bosses and nado because pdr and mdr is so high. Coupled with my prayer merc healing half my hp every tick, it might as well be godmode. He shows a complete lack of understanding of basic balance. Mercs get level 20 skills the second you recruit them. Don't believe me? Rush a char to act 3, buy the merc, aura 1 shots everything in a1 up to inner. Prayer scaling off max hp would be fine if mercs didn't get such a high level of it so as to surpass actual healers in effectiveness. And they stack, how did he not know prayer stacked? You would think if you were going to make a skill as strong as prayer is right now readily available on mercs you'd check to see if it stacked.

All the flavor is gone in the game. Mercs are nothing more than stacking pdr, runewords are useless, most uniques are garbage. Most skill paths are woefully weaker than others because he used the most retarded balancing scheme possible, and half the time it doesn't even make sense. Orb hits harder than blizzard and applies more often? The fuck? Firebolt significantly weaker than ice bolt, but ice bolt slows too? Nothing makes any god damn sense. Gearing has suffered the most. Lack of viable slotting, lack of useful uniques, sets are either garbage or best in slot. I love how he out multi on gloves, just in case you wanted to shoot 3 arrows an inch out of your character, like yeah my super uber golemancer auradin will make use of this. Sets used to have viable purposes like auras or interesting mechanics like more skills or pierce, now they're either wear them because they're innately better or don't because they're useless beyond some retarded oskill nom-sense.

I played with him and he literally thought I was trolling him because I was walking past a group, dropping fissure, then moving on. Meanwhile he's smiting the leftovers as I've killed 3-4 packs, spouting nonsense about being under-leveled. Fact is I gained 4-5 levels on him and he quit stating he was behind after raven.

There is no progression beyond normal outside of just doing the content to do it. It's not even fun when you're not actively working towards something.

Who the fuck tested this? Did you not see all these fucking problems? I saw mana problems literally at level 6, and I don't mean minor ones, I mean game breaking I can only cast cb three times before potting despite all my points being in energy. I did not see the lack of end game content because I wasn't actively testing.

Everyone shit all over ensley but his patch was thoroughly enjoyable, and I had long conversations with him about different things he could improve on. Talking to brevan might as well be talking to a wall. He has this gigantic ego and refuses to even listen to the prospect that he fucked up. Haven't seen him admit it once, and that is why I turned from amiable to caustic, and the same with others. He doesn't see a problem with his patch, or if he does he hasn't admitted it.

I will go as far as to say the physical immune bosses patch was more enjoyable than this, and I am sure people agree seeing as no one is even playing.

And as for blue, blue took an absolutely retarded approach to balancing. Bone necro hasn't been the same since he saw my literal perfect bone necro trash andariel and he went well that's getting nerfed. Ever since then they've been nothing but chip damage to stop boss healing, trash clearers, and aura bots.

Unfortunately the game doesn't allow you to balance too efficiently between playable during leveling and progression and completely perfect characters, but when you snap nerf a class by 40% and remove the bug synergy you ruin it. You can see this in brevans poison characters.

Now I guess people are seeing the many issues I seen testing this patch from norm to hell.. I ran.10 plus different builds from tanks to casters and I said there were issues everywhere. As I said before these changes were to drastic . What bothers me when I look up the realm status and Hu is a ghost town..

_________________P.S. Have I superceeded your infininate need for proper English now or will your mind forever be locked in a perpetual stacis.

Who else tested? Why were issues ignored? On another note, did anyone even have fun this patch? Every build I tried was a mana pot simulator, and that isn't even remotely fun. Realistically it shouldn't even exist as a stat beyond energy shield for sorcs and if you want to place value in energy make it synergize as damage.

It's not fucking rocket science. It's an archaic mechanic that never made any sense in rhe first place.

1)Charms. I didnt use any of them in HU 1.7, the only charms i used was the ones with MF. To me the idea that my inventory is going to get filled with charms is totally atrocious. I better have a mod with charms disabled. And this isnt just problem in HU 1.7, its with many other mods.

2)Item-isation.What i understand about itemisation is that Brevan tried to make every item type worthy (rares, sets, uniques) and in a way he succeeded because u can probably find a rare that it better than your current unique and u probably compare 5 uniques on your char to a set (stats wise). BUT the problem is HOW different? Because items in HU 1.7 have very similar stats/properties. One example, almost all weapons get +bonus attack speed. Life Steal, Mana Steal, Half Freeze duration etc etc. There are so many unique properties that exist in so many items that they simply dont feel different..So the itemisation becomes boring and you stop caring that u picked another unique weapon or another rare simply because they all have very similar properties.I said this in another forum as well..... The problem is the number of the properties on items.. they are too many.... If you want to make itemisation interesting then u have to reduce the amount of properties on the items as much as possible. For example.

Rare items: 1-3 properties. And since properties on items are randomized you will always be picking rare items with different stats hence itemisation will become interesting.

Unique items: No standard number of properties simply because they are uniques. Meaning a unique item might as well give just one property (something like +300% weapon dmg) or 7 properties. Its up to you to balance it.

3)Some skillsThis is something way less negative but i think its worth mentioning.Skills such as Concentrate. Why upgrade them more than once when the bonuses from lvls are so low? why not just learn it once and then spend points on Sword Mastery?

FYI Blue as NOT solely in charge of balancing. If you took the time to comprehend what I said, you would see that it was done by a group of us. Not everything was agreed on...at some point we had to stop arguing within the community about what was 'perfect', and put something out to play.

From that point on, it was decided to have more of a '1 person' at the top. Sometimes with several helping in small to large ways. The effect of this has been to lose most that have made a patch. (i don't feel like rehashing every episode, as i feel many of us remember it well enough).

And after reading a lot of the posts again, Brevan is listening to you. The part that seems to be missed is that he is giving his reasoning behind we he made these decisions in the first place. There is no taking this one back, so it is pointless to gripe in the fashion you are. Yes, I know you have also taken the time to run with him for abit to show some things as well (this is very good), and to explain directly with him. I am not privy to those, so I cannot say if the same is true of the posts on the forum.

That being said, this was meant to be a beginning of sorts, not the end of it. It was stated explicitly that others could expand on what is there on another patch iteration. There is again a lot in the patch that would be good to carry over to anything done next. (particularly the new bosses).

The concerns that several bring up are definitely worthy of attention, and it is totally understandable to be (very) frustrated when you don't think you are being heard. It still does nobody any good to just harp.

I mean hell, even Asteroth has kept a reign on things

_________________The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

@doubtful Some uniques have incredible power and will never find anything rare to replace it. Rising sun, bverrit keep, the teleport ammy, ironpelt early followed by glad chest later. I find no issue with charms, and the fact you don't think an inventory full of vita charms is powerful I find interesting. Literal double health for wearing them. Keep the cube in inventory, keep 8 slots open, throw everything you want into the cube. Pretty standard.

@kramuti All I know is he solely saw my necro, he solely claimed it was broken, and it got nerfed into the ground.

And while he has responded, if you took the time to read my prior posts I said he hasn't taken responsibility. Every answer came back to look at my design sheet, mana gets better later because the curve can only be balanced for early vs late, and have you tried playing with a med paladin?

Have you met one person who has said yeah mana seems fine to me? Everyone I run into has complained, how the fuck did it get past testing? Did no one make any sort of sorc? The problem is shown the second you put on a +3 skill staff and put points into a skill.

And his response was don't level your skills. What the fuck.

This patch is a disaster. From mana problems on every caster, to shitty nm and hell balancing, to zero itemization, to complete gutting of skill trees, to vast majority of once viable skills being made unviable, to every innovation to quality od life being removed, to an utter shitting on difficulty.

The only hard boss in the game was diablo, everything else I could stand point blank and spam until it died.

The only good things I can think of are builds coming online sooner, maybe some interesting mechanics added via akara ring. I am all for new stuff being added too like legion, but when the base game is so tedious and boring who is going to even bother?

I definitely feel a lot of the same sentiments as Pious. The frustrating thing for me is a lot of these issues were brought up more than once in testing and were met with resistance, ignored, or not addressed well. Once I realized a lot of what I and others were saying was basically being brushed under the rug, I stopped giving input altogether and didn't test much further.

- I had to basically throw a temper tantrum to get mana costs reduced (they were higher in earlier versions) and at that point they still were not reduced enough/some builds and skills need more individual tweaking than others (ex: FOH is very mana friendly and has a meditation synergy, which basically makes it perma-casting when used). I finally had to make a full energy, 9 lum rune sorc with maxed warmth to prove my point (and that's pushing it to the extreme - a character like that should be able to cast almost infinitely). The sorc actually has the least of the mana issues with casters because they get hefty mana per energy and shitty life per vit (it's almost useless to stat vit on a sorc, since you can easily replace it with some charms). Plus, they get warmth, and regen from each of the 3 masteries. I do think that mana should mean something as a resource and shouldn't be an afterthought, but it's definitely tedious for most classes as is and probably could use a good 30-40% reduction across the board in conjunction with some individual skill tweaks as well. For me, it should be skewed towards perma casting with a little investment into energy or gear. Far too heavy into potion chugging in the current state, especially with how beefy trash gets as you progress.

- On bosses vs trash: Another thing that was a major point brought up during testing. The biggest two offenses here are 1) how strong and tanky trash is in nm and hell and 2) how weak bosses were. Almost every boss should be difficult like diablo was. And killing trash shouldn't be a chore, I believe current nm trash should be how hell trash is in a more balanced mod, and current normal trash should replace nm trash. The problem, as stated by Pious, is because trash is much stronger and they don't offer anything of actual value, there is no reason to even fight them.

- On items: The biggest issue with items for me is the introduction of oskills everywhere. It renders the idea of group play rather useless when I can get BO, increased stamina, lycanthropy shift, and a weaken wand all on my paladin with one set of gear. The other issue as previously discussed is that a lot of end game items are just ones found in the first couple of acts of normal upgraded twice. Was never really a fan of farming or grinding at all, but to find my end game wand at normal mort is a bit disappointing and kind of makes nightmare useless (I do believe hell should be reserved for the journey and the achievement only, but a discussion for another thread).

- On quality of life/bugs/etc: Definitely a pain to have things such as rejuvenation potions that fail to heal anything, bugged madawc, other areas where skills randomly do insane damage (ex: sometimes a marilith firestorm will deal 1k damage, most of the time it doesn't move the life bulb at all), the quantity of throwing axed and javs are particularly annoying.

I think 1.7 has some things that are improvements over old versions, namely:- the removal of skill trees and prerequisites- the reduction of skills with several synergies to allow people to explore other skills rather than be pigeon-holed into one specific build (I really think most builds should be 40-60 points and synergies lessened so that it offers a choice of "do i want a stronger skill at the cost of 20-40 skill points, or do i want one that functions fine but be able to skill something else").- having normal and nightmare be where you level and gear your character and hell be more of a twink/completion/for-the-glory difficulty- rune drop improvement for the first time ever- the reduction of a lot the unbelievably overpowered builds

I definitely do appreciate the work that was put into this patch, and it's a thankless job that will never please everyone (just about every patch ever). I've enjoyed playing HC to nightmare but know that the amount of time spent to grind through, nor what is ahead, is not enjoyable for me. I do think in the future there needs to be a lot more focus on community input into patch creation.

These have just been replaced with playable builds versus unplayable builds.

Quote:

- rune drop improvement for the first time ever

Loses it's value since the only runewords are shield and helm BO items.

Quote:

- having normal and nightmare be where you level and gear your character and hell be more of a twink/completion/for-the-glory difficulty

I don't mind hell being a for the glory type of deal, but I do strongly believe character progression should continue. Which is why higher level uniques should be in the game to allow a character to continue to grow. normal 1-70, nm 70-90, hell 90-101.

Quote:

- the reduction of skills with several synergies to allow people to explore other skills rather than be pigeon-holed into one specific build (I really think most builds should be 40-60 points and synergies lessened so that it offers a choice of "do i want a stronger skill at the cost of 20-40 skill points, or do i want one that functions fine but be able to skill something else").

I definitely like the idea of standard 60 point builds with the opportunity to then decide between 40 points in slightly lower synergies or utility like oak/BO/etc. But the problem is everything is frontloaded on skills right now because synergies are weak as shit.

Regarding trash mobs vs bosses.Honestly, i think about 20-30% of my unique/set drops are from trash mobs. I have like 100-130 MF and i get a unique/set item every 10 min or so.So i think they are actually well balanced compare to bosses' drops.The negative aspect for me (as i said above) is the actual properties on most items. They are very similar.

In the past 95s would only drop from tundra and beyond. Tundra had huge mob density, so it was the go to place for farming 95s and xp. This made farming mobs decent for two spectrums, but rushing belial and azmodan easily gave more uniques per time spent. It's the same still, in a sense, you can rush inner boss, trav bridge boss, in a minute or so and get tons of uniques.

for me, trying out new builds was definitely entertaining at first. after getting enough characters to late normal and deciding most were too weak for my taste, it became a matter of what is needed to progress to hell baal. once i realized my barb was essentially capped out or close to it in power by a5 normal, and that upgraded mort uniques like azurewrath would be best in slot, then it dawned on me how inefficient it would be to even bother killing trash mobs past normal. at that point, the mod simply did not feel fun. a lack of character progression and no meaningful reward for effort meant a rather boring walk from one act to the next. since bosses this version are weaker than any other version of hu previous, even those battles felt very unrewarding.

it really is that simple, to me at least. playing stopped feeling fun. there wasn't an awsome level 95 item that would enable me to do baal in hell, or some great boss charms that were worth grinding xp to be able to use. there was literally no point to improve my barb's strength beyond what was available at lvl 86 in normal. to me, character progression is a huge deal, and being able to reasonably cap that out in normal was a huge letdown.

i could go on about how trash counters and boss counters basically make many aoe multihitting builds non viable but thats really just small details. if it felt more fun i'd keep playing but it just doesn't because there is nothing rewarding past normal, not even a challenge from progression or great items. i understand the game design was intended for players to slug it out with trash but if there is no incentive to do so, players like me won't bother. as such, simply stacking armor and using skills like whirlwind/teleport to zoom past everything in nm/hell is the most efficient way to go.

i realize a lot of people get angry and frustrated here but flaming brevan isn't the way to go. we've literally driven away many great modders who were among the most passionate HU supporters by doing this (think mraw, ensley, drhc, saphirerawk, blue). this is only a few of the folks that helped, i know i forgot to list many others.

yet all of us are essentially saying the same thing: that playing as it stands just isn't that fun. most of the hc community quit after the first 2 days. i went to sc shortly after that, and really had to force myself to finish the journey to hell baal. if the discussion could go more towards what the remaining community finds fun, and make changes along those lines, more progress can be made.

It wouldn't be too hard to tweak it and make it playable. If I knew how to mod I would mod it.

Level progression:-normal 1-70-nm 70-90-hell 90-101-It's important to make experience in normal cap out at a certain point so that you can't hit late 90s in normal. I don't know what this entails, but the wsk being 65 with the latter parts of the baal encounter pushing to 70 would possibly do it?

Character trees:General:-mana cuts across the board to 1/3rd what they areParty wide buffs:-buff bo to 2x current effectiveness, cta once again a weapon with a mid level req(think 50s or end of normal), shield runeword should be 95 required(make zod level 95 req) ---- this gives non barb parties access to a powerful buff that helps smooth over the damage increases, but barbs will have stronger bo(add in a unique with +bo for them to have a switch)-oak unique to druid, high level barbs available on a unique-amp lr available on items, necros provide it at double the strength /or/ 1.5x the strength with the added benefit of weaken-weaken necro only

Zon:Phys bowa:-ga pierces again-multi given it's range back, a decent spread of arrows early, extra points mainly as a buff to ga damage-if fanat isnt going to be a runeword they need a passive attack speed to hit max fpa on gmp-stop trying to make xbows or strafe work, they suck.

Fire zon:-the immo arrow either needs to have an increased intensity with such a short flame duration or a longer duration. If you strike a balance on a decent firewall boss killer, you can go from there. It should, given free attacking, kill a bit quicker since it requires more upkeep and has counters.-the entire frost line is pointless, I see no way to fix it outside of absurdly high values, but it makes an excellent off element killer for fire immunes so integrate the two together

Melee zon:-jab needs to do significantly more damage or they need to be given more hp and defenses to be viable-fend should be their trash killer, make it an aoe swing opposed to a shitty zeal

Poison:-this would require a fair bit of testing, but in general they should kill at 80% of the speed of a firewall sorc because they have less maintenance-personally i would ignore trying to balance poison for the time being

druid:Tornado:-fix the synergies so hurricane does relevant damage and the frost stream is built into the kit. This is how they deal with physical immunes.-the natural armor defense bonuses are pointless if they do not linger

Fire:-this build has always been a piece of shit because of awkward abilties, I think you're onto something with molten boulder though, but it needs more projectiles and no cast delay

Fclaw/fbite:-while nado needs relevant hurricane damage, these builds need to push it even further, and the values need to be drastically improved on their single target

1)Every point to every skill should be meaningful. This means the bonuses must be big enough to want to make u upgrade a skill.I would dare to even suggest maxing skills at lower lvl if needed. Like 10 or so, instead of 20. For example:If lets say skills max at lvl 8 and each time u upgrade a skill the bonuses are big then that system becomes meaningful. An addition to this would be a system with more skills than vanilla for each class, giving ppl choices for more builds and ofc more meaningful builds.

I do understand that what i say now requires an overhaul of the entire mod and thats tonz of work

2)Characters shoulnt be able to reach lvl 80 or so in normal. Should be 30 or so. This way give players one more reason to continue playing in other difficulties.

So, I've done a lot of reading and very little talking as I play through this patch, I've leveled 3 or 4 characters, my main is currently a level 78 fury druid and I think I'm about done. It's been a mostly enjoyable learning experience, though not exactly satisfying gameplay (the only other HU patch I played was I think 1.5?). I have some thoughts from a (relatively) outsider perspective.

1.) Detractors seriously need to chill out with the rage. I don't think anyone is seriously claiming 1.7 is perfect, or even passable. It has its issues, some of them super glaring (mana costs, itemization, strange skill choices etc). But it seems like some of you guys have, given the level of anger and rudeness in some of your posts, switched from trying to provide constructive criticism to just wanting to be angry about it and make sure the people who made 1.7 are aware of how angry you are, and that you think they're stupid. While that is certainly a defensible position, if somewhat rude, it doesn't really help anything to spew bile and vitriol into the forums about how bad you think the mod is.

2.) This is a bit of a question and then a criticism I guess, but why do so many of the regular forum posters approach the game from a competitive standpoint? And why is it a general design philosophy for HU to approach it as if players are competing against each other? Unless you make every skill a pallet swap on the same numbers, for any individual class, there will always be a "best" build. And among those best builds for each character, there will always one character whose best build is the best of the best. Mathematically this is an unavoidable consequence.

Now, the way I look at it is there are two paths from this, you can either try and fight that, and close the gaps as best you can and try to make character power as homogeneous as possible across 7 characters and dozens of builds and item set ups etc etc. Or, you can let things flow naturally, be ok with there being a king of the hill, and mere peasants below and adjust the hill. Make it not quite so tall, and balance the game around the middle of the pack. You should be able to play the game as any reasonable archetype of a character, and if someone really wants to play the super awesome <insert best build here> and have no challenge in the game, or to farm items on autopilot, or because being the best most awesome demon killer in a game that is approaching the age of consent in America is really that important to their ego... let them. What skin off your back is it? Sure, it might make the game boring to have them in your group, if they aren't your friend, just don't play with them. Or if they are your friend, tell them to fuck off with the teleporting immortal hammerdin with 3.5 million effective HP that 2 shots everything from classic and play something interesting.

The game shouldn't be balanced around the top build for characters, because that means that either A.) you have a super bland soup where everything is mostly the same and there is 0 replay value, or reason to play a character beyond build completion, or B.) you have a bunch of builds that simply do not work because they aren't as good as the best, and they eventually hit a wall.

3.) To this patch specifically, I understand from a design perspective trying to mix it up, but the execution on that plan makes very little sense to me. In an attempt to foster build diversity and complex choices, it seems like you've just removed any cohesion in character archetype. As I am sitting here on my Druid, I'll take some examples of what I mean from there. A Fire based caster Druid has Firestorm, Fissure, Molten Boulder, Volcano and Armageddon as things that would fit within that archetype as valid offensive spells. Firestorm benefits from Twister and Hurricane, Fissure from Tornado and Hurricane, Molten Boulder from Arctic Blast and Armageddon, Volcano from Summon Spirit Wolf and Armageddon, and Armageddon from Frost Bite. The only synergies from within the archetype to reward a character willing to focus on fire damage exclusively (and suffer when they encounter something strong against fire) is a MB/Volc/Arma build, rewarding a 60 point investment with ~40% damage boost on 2/3rds of your kit, both of which have cast delays. Now look at Arctic Blast, take those 20 points out of Volc and put them into Arctic Blast, which has an 80% boost from those two Fire archetype spells, keep Arma up, MB now has an ~80% boost instead of ~40%, you only have one cast delay spell that is much stronger than the pure Fire track, a persistant aoe around you that receives 0 benefits from any caster choices, and a spammable AOE spell of differing element to weave between your spicy meatballs. And its the same thing on the other side with Hurricane/Fissure/Tornado. Why? Shouldn't you pay for diversity with a less powerful kit?

I guess to short circuit a in-depth and disappointed trip through the rest of my Druid skill tree, the overarching question I can just ask is: Why are there no rewards for a pure archetype? It seems like every class is an eclectic mixture of skill choices that don't have any cohesion and you are punished for not diversifying, a pure Fire caster Druid gives more benefit to Wind skills than his own kit. A summon Druid has literally 1 synergy within the 80 point investment on Raven/Spirit Wolf/Dire Wolf/Grizzly which is 20 life on Dire Wolves and 40% lightning damage on Ravens, which you can ignore Dire Wolf/Grizzly for and still get.

And 4.) A more light hearted question, can anyone explain why Madawc is killing me in less than a second after I facefuck Talic and Korlic, but only if I actually get into melee range with him?

You can't be constructive when the person who made it doesn't think there is a problem.

i don't know why madawc is doing that, but I do know it's a shit load of large packets hitting you very quickly. 80 mdr pdr didn't help at all, and I watched my bulb the second time and it's just chunks of damage every 2-3 frames,

Brevan and Rage do not (at present at least) see themselves working on at least the next patch, if not two. This deserves notice, because they simply are not going to be the ones that change it. It will be somebody (or several somebody's) to do the next patch. So bitching at Brevan literally has zero benefit.

Now, what we as a community need to decide eventually (NOT now) is this. What are the goods and bads (we are getting enough on this list i think) that we should keep or toss.

Will it be worth keeping a lot of the work that was done that has ZERO to do with gameplay. Aka, what file set will people end up using. I argue that at least the bosses, zones, and file structure changes should be kept. Cleaning these, and simplifying how the speak to one another is a massive deal. Those that have not dipped their toes into modding can't fully appreciate this kind of thing. (It is also a reason why I personally do not want somebody new to modding in charge of the next patch).

There are some things that I would like back from 1.5/6. The primary one being removal of juvs, and 1red+1blue potion only, based on % health (like it was in 1.5. it was mistakenly changed in 1.6).

Bahooka...i like a lot of your post. as far as competition: most folks will consider themselves knowledgeable and also good at this game. Most of 'em are. Competency breeds competition. It is in our blood. Competition should not however necessitate a bad humour.

_________________The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

The plan was to play this for 1 year, while someone adjusts 1.6c and it comes out as 1.8 sometime next january. Problem is most patches had a decent amount of replayability and people playing at least 6-7 months into it. No one is really playing this it's a graveyard.

Yeah, seems like most people are over 1.7 at this point, which is unfortunate because I was looking forward to it. Playing around with some friends in 1.6 for a bit here as I missed that patch on realm.

Would be nice if whomever was actively working on 1.8 would identify themselves so we can try as a community to avoid what happened with 1.7.

Also, is there any possibility of the 1.7 crew trying to make a "1.7a" if you will, and moving it toward some of the feedback that has been given? Seems like there is plenty of time between now and the plans for 1.8 to give it another go.

After playing 1.7 a bit, I seem to have the same feelings as many of the old vets:

The mana costs are absurdly high, especially when regen gets nerfed into the ground with smaller pools n thus slower rate to multiply off of. Leeching gets a double whammy as well from doing smaller amounts of dmg to apply leech from WITH smaller % values. Making this even worse somehow is skill costs going way up with increased level.

The items are very boring across the board. I feel little to no desire to level a character when the best stuff is upgraded shit that dropped from a1 norm. I always thought it was fun, especially playing an assassin as going from one set to the next was great! I do however miss what gems used to do (-resist in weps, leech for skulls), and feel with too many things with thorns dmg that many flag/onkill portals are missed from it.

There are a few good things this time around though, as there always is. Mana burn functions a bit better now, there's no skill prereqs now other than for BO and how that skill was squashed into a single aura is great. The rune drops make sense now (finding ELs past a2 always was a head shaker), too bad there's hardly anything worth using them on. I like how mobs can have random abilities like curses n things like that zerkers have WW, though how trash like the infidels having it seems too much; they aren't special enough for it and with so many of them spinning it becomes an issue of where we see them vs actual location due to server tear/latency.

Ah well, are 1.3 files for both ends still around?!? My buddies and I always keep refering back to those days...

I completely agree with Twilightdusk and the other vets!! and I would love to have access to each of the old patches, and really take the best of them and roll them all into 1 perfect version of HU, then I would really like to play more often.

For those wondering who is next to get throttled by the community...a few have already said they want to work on it, but I would not put a lot of weight into that so early after a release. Maybe it will hold, maybe it won't.

Those that are recalling 1.3 as a beautiful patch, I encourage you to go back and read the old threads. The consensus was not quite what people are remembering. It wasn't bad per say, but it surely did have issues.

I will reiterate that I personally think that there is quite a bit in 1.7 that should be kept in future patches. In my opinion, use this as the base...change it drastically if you want, but A LOT was done under the hood, and giving new areas/monsters. Losing these sets everything back. And ffs if you are the one to do things, don't use Excel, as you will bork nearly every bloody file you save...this has been fixed more than once.

_________________The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

I completely agree with Twilightdusk and the other vets!! and I would love to have access to each of the old patches, and really take the best of them and roll them all into 1 perfect version of HU, then I would really like to play more often.

Working on it. Doing a rebalance and I'm going through old versions looking at different items they had, how different builds functioned, and different features.

_________________The body is but a vessel for the soul, a puppet which bends to the souls tyranny. And lo, the body is not eternal, for it must feed on the flesh of others, lest it return to the dust from whence it came. Therefore the soul deceive, despise and murder men.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum